Building Utopia: Performance and the Fantasy of Urban Renewal in Contemporary Toronto

Levin, Laura; Solga, Kim

doi:10.1162/dram.2009.53.3.37

Cited by 43 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Research that interrogates the contradictory role community-engaged arts practice plays within creative city initiatives is also bourgeoning (Levin and Solga, 2009;Harvie, 2011;Mclean, 2016). Some claim that creative city partnerships fore-fronting inclusivity and diversity can open up novel opportunities for artistic expression (Richards, 2001;Mowforth and Munt, 2003).…”

Section: The Contradictory Role Of Community-engaged Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, critics argue that the political and pedagogical potential of communityengaged art is hindered by broader socio-economic forces (Harvie, 2013). Some claim that blockbuster art festivals favour participatory aesthetic practices because these activities spatially and discursively transform everyday urban spaces into highly-valued sites of artistic consumption (Yudice, 2003;Levin and Solga, 2009). Moreover, critics charge that festivals programmed explicitly to attract capital tend to exclude critical feminist and queer artists grappling with social and economic injustice in their practice (Schulman, 2009;Levin and Solga, 2009;Harvie, 2013).…”

Section: The Contradictory Role Of Community-engaged Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some contend that contemporary festivals open up novel opportunities for artists to engage in interactive projects that explore everyday urban spaces (Quinn, 2009). However, feminist and queer critics argue that, as arts organisations, philanthropists and corporate sponsors seek to attract investment and build networks via festivals, they tend to program safe and market-friendly notions of queer and ethnic diversity and avoid politicised queer arts interventions (Levin and Solga, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

McLean

2018

Urban Studies

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This article draws from and advances urban studies literature on ‘creative city’ policies by exploring the contradictory role of queer arts practice in contemporary placemarketing strategies. Here I reflect on the fraught politics surrounding Radiodress’s each hand as they are called project, a deeply personal exploration of radical Jewish history programmed within Luminato, a Toronto-based international festival of creativity. Specifically, I explore how Luminato and the Koffler Centre, a Jewish organisation promoting contemporary art, regulated Radiodress’s work in order to stage marketable notions of ethnic and queer diversity. I also examine how and why the Koffler Centre eventually blacklisted Radiodress and her project. However, I also consider the ways Radiodress and Toronto artists creatively and collectively responded to these tensions. I maintain that bringing queer arts practice into discussions about contemporary creative city policies uncovers sites of queer arts activism that scale up to shape broader policies and debates. Such disidentificatory interventions, acts of co-opting and re-working discourses which exclude minoritarian subjects, challenge violent processes of colonisation and commodification on multiple fronts, as well as fostering more collective and relational ways of being.

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Section: The Contradictory Role Of Community-engaged Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Contradictory Role Of Community-engaged Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

McLean

2018

Urban Studies

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“…Over the past few decades in cities around the world, growth coalitions composed of state and corporate actors have staged spectacularized arts festivals as part of broader ‘creative city’ or culture‐led urban regeneration strategies (Levin and Solga, ; Quinn, ). City boosters with global city aspirations collaborate with banks and other large corporations to plan blockbuster arts events featuring a select few ‘world‐class’ artists.…”

Section: Blockbuster Events and The Spectacle Of Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

McLean

2014

Int J Urban Regional Res

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The recent flurry of research about arts-led regeneration initiatives illuminates how contemporary arts festivals can become complicit in the production of urban inequality. But researchers rarely engage with detailed empirical examples that shed light on the contradictory role that artists sometimes play within these spectacularized events. Similar research in performance studies connects the political limits and potential of social practice arts -interventions that encourage artists and non-artists to co-produce work -as civic boosters strive to stage cities in order to attract investment. In this article, I explore the case study of Streetscape: Living Space at Regent Park, a participatory artistic intervention programmed in a public housing neighbourhood that is undergoing redevelopment in Toronto, Canada. Streetscape was part of the Luminato festival, an elite booster coalition-led festival of 'creativity'. I refer to these arts interventions to demonstrate how artists engaging in social practice arts can become complicit in naturalizing colonial gentrification processes at multiple scales. But I also reveal how artists can leverage heterogeneous arts-led regeneration strategies to make space for 'radical social praxis ' (Kwon, 2004), interventions that challenge hegemonic regimes. I conclude by interrogating the effectiveness of place-based efforts in unsettling the 'creative city'.

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“…11. For a perceptive analysis of how this process plays out in material but politically ambiguous ways, see Levin and Solga (2009 Paradigms of site-specificity have been deployed almost exclusively to inform interpretations of contemporary performances, yet surely these precepts might also serve to unlock the meanings of past theatrical events. As a challenge to conventional temporal restrictions on the use of site-specific theory, this chapter releases the moment of performance in one early modern theatrical happening.…”

Section: Fantasies Of Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing Site-Specific Theatre

Birch¹,

Tompkins²

2012

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Performance Interventions is a series of monographs and essay collections on theatre, performance, and visual culture that share an underlying commitment to the radical and political potential of the arts in our contemporary moment, or give consideration to performance and to visual culture from the past deemed crucial to a social and political present. Performance Interventions moves transversally across artistic and ideological boundaries to publish work that promotes dialogue between practitioners and academics, and interactions between performance communities, educational institutions, and academic disciplines.

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Building Utopia: Performance and the Fantasy of Urban Renewal in Contemporary Toronto

Abstract: Toronto markets itself as a city in renewal, a “creative city” of the future full of arts and culture. Alongside the official pitch, a number of street-level underground initiatives reimagine Toronto's utopic future in a different way by means of site-specific performances.

Cited by 43 publications

References 6 publications

Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

Regulating and resisting queer creativity: Community-engaged arts practice in the neoliberal city

Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

Performing Site-Specific Theatre

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